A KORA OF KORAS

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In 1933, the psychologist Carl Jung came to America and visited the Pueblo
Indians of New Mexico. One early morning as the sky began to lighten above the
vast silence of the New Mexican desert, Jung and an old Pueblo Indian man,
Ochwiay Biano, climbed up onto the roof of an adobe kiva. Jung wrote about
what happened in his biography, ‘Memories, Dreams and Reflections’:
"As I sat with Ochwiay Biano on the roof, the blazing sun rising higher and
higher, he said, pointing to the sun, “Is not he who moves there our father? How
can anyone say differently?
How can there be another god? Nothing can be without the sun.”
His excitement, which was already perceptible, mounted still higher; he struggled
for words, and exclaimed at last, “What would a man do alone in the mountains?
He cannot even build his fire without him.” I asked him whether he did not think
the sun might be a fiery ball shaped by an invisible god. My question did not even
arouse astonishment, let alone anger.”
“Obviously it touched nothing within him; he did not even think my question
stupid. It merely left him cold, I had the feeling that I had come upon an
insurmountable wall. Although no one can help feeling the tremendous impress
of the sun, it was a novel and deeply affecting experience for me to see these
mature, dignified men in the grip of an overmastering emotion when they spoke
of it.” - Carl Jung